Egypt isn't what it appears to be in the media...but that's no real surprise, since not much is. I moved here in the late 80's from Toronto, Canada, with my Canadian/Egyptian husband, my son and my daughter. The children adapted quickly and we decided that this country was a good place to live. Now I wouldn't change my home for anything.

Monday, March 28, 2011

This following post was passed to me by a friend in Moscow who had spent some happy years here. We traced it to another friend who is Dutch/Egyptian. I have no idea who wrote it but it is perfect. I'm truly concerned that this is absolutely right. If anyone knows who wrote this I really want to know.

This is a note that’s been circulating on Facebook about a conspiracy re. the Egyptian revolution. I have to admit that over the past few years more and more conspiracy theories have been making sense to me. This one does too.

The Coup

Egypt just had what many see as a revolution. Certain demands, including the trying of a strongman, were forcefully made by millions all over Egypt. To give the impression that all that would take place, Mubarak appointed a Supreme Military Council (SMC) and then went on sabbatical to Sharm El Sheikh. At present, the SMC is in full control. The Egyptian people are supposed to put their full trust in the SMC, go to sleep, and, before they know it, all their dreams will come true. Personally, as an Egyptian citizen, I’m having trouble sleeping soundly. So, please indulge me by allowing me to take you on a short hypothetical journey to make my point. Please imagine that I am a high-ranking member of the SMC, the military high command that a deposed president appointed after his resignation. My council has been entrusted with a monumental task. We are required to appear to hand over power in an orderly manner to the people and to arrange for free and fair elections for parliament as well as president. But we have one small problem. We don’t want to go. If we go, it will be as good as signing our death warrants. Who the hell will protect us from all the corruption we’ve been involved in for decades? How will we be able to live with open budgets that could fall under civilian scrutiny? What will happen to our businesses and contracting companies? How will we explain the American FMS money we’ve been living off for so long? What will happen when they start probing into our personal wealth files? Imagine, civilians giving orders to the military; sacrilegious stuff. No, sir! It is not just that we don’t want to go. The clear fact is: we cannot afford to go!

But we now have another problem. For the moment, the people trust us, but some of them are starting to make funny noises about Mubarak; they are demanding he be put on trial. That is crazy. He is the one to whom we owe all this good life. If he is put on trial, many heads will roll, our own being on the frontline. So, we must devise a plan to soothe the masses. We need to play our cards right to be able to fool the people. We shall use our customary methods of intimidation, but not too much before the situation is fully under control. Right now, the situation is too precarious to take the risk of starting another revolution. We are treading on thin ice. Our top priority is to regain control over the public in order to destroy their ability to rise in large numbers again. That is the only weapon we cannot deal with. Actually, we were so relieved on the 11th of February. The numbers were so huge we could easily have been forced to leave with Mubarak. Fortunately, we escaped unscathed, but we must never allow the masses to rally in such numbers again.

Okay, here’s the plan - First, we shall use a few ex-ministers, all civilians of course, as highly-publicised corruption scapegoats to give the gullible public the impression that we are fighting corruption, tooth and nail. They will buy us some time. Next, we shall give the public a tame new cabinet, with a few old ministers we do not want to let go of. This we shall do after much histrionics in clinging to the Mubarak-appointed cabinet. So when the new cabinet takes over, relief among the population will be so high, it will buy us even more time. All along, we shall keep issuing pacifying statements and releasing small numbers of prisoners to keep the charade alive.

Then comes the next phase: splitting the population. To do that, I now need to play the constitution card. Now, everyone is aware that the protesters did not carry a religious message; they wanted secular rule. But we all know that Egypt contains extreme religious factions. What better way to split the nation than to set them up in acrimonious confrontation? We, the SMC, are fully aware that we could have followed the demands of the protesters, given them an elected council to draft a new constitution in line with those demands, held a referendum after several months to give everybody a chance to understand the new document and embark on a serious attempt to make Egypt a prosperous and transparent country, in which the role of religious parties would be roughly proportional to the numbers we saw among the protesting crowds. In that scenario, religion would not be a threat and everybody would be able to live in harmony and religious tolerance.But, we already told you we do not want that. We wish to split the nation and religion is our best chance of doing it. So let’s play with the constitution. We do not want to tamper with the articles that give the president almost omnipotent powers and total immunity from any kind of punitive measures. Such articles might serve us well in future and, at the same time, we must not give the population too much rope; they’ve been reined in quite nicely for the time being. In line with our objective, we shall appoint a ten-man council, all loyal lackeys with heavy religious agendas in order to suggest some meaningless modifications in the 1971 constitution as a temporary means of moving to parliamentary elections thereafter. That way we shall appear to be taking serious legislative action towards open elections within a few months. Once we put these modifications to a referendum and they get the green light, the rest will be easy, because we know that the only political forces capable of contesting any elections, already well organised and in full combat gear, are the remnants of the NDP and the Muslim Brotherhood. They are both devoid of scruples and can thus help us drive the scam home quite convincingly. None of the troublesome protesters of the square will have time to mount a serious challenge. Of course, we shall have no problem fixing the referendum results; we’re veterans at that game. With no serious monitoring, we can determine the result beforehand. This time anything over eighty percent will look suspicious, so we’ll have to go down a bit, but not too much lest the margin over fifty percent be too low to account for some election irregularities being sufficient to tip the scale. Let’s go for around 77 percent. After that it will be plain sailing. The population will be split down the middle and the religious parties will gain much ground. Fear of religious domination might even persuade secular elements to insist that we remain in control. Whatever puppet of a president or majority party ‘wins’ the upcoming elections will be putty in our hands. We won’t have to go and everything will be fine. Of course, Mubarak will never be allowed to stand trial.

We realise that what we are doing is tantamount to a coup d’etat against the people, but we have no other way. The coup’s victim was not Mubarak; he was just another participant. The real victim was and still is the poor people of Egypt and what they believed was a revolution.

Pages

Subscribe To

Followers

Follow by Email

Life isn't only made up of political problems. Most of us spend more time concerned with our families, friends, and neighbours than with the latest actions of whatever government we may have inflicted upon us. Our daily lives are our commonality.

Painting my wagon

About Me

I came to Egypt as the wife of an Egyptian/Canadian businessman and the mother of our children in the late 80's. My husband is no longer with us, the children are pursuing careers abroad, but Egypt is still my home, albeit, a rural rather than urban one. You can reach me at msgabbani at gmail.com